showiest Paris goods, richest silks, and costliest
laces. He loves to see Madame and Mademoiselle
Mezzo Ceto well dressed, and grudges them
nothing. And if we look in at San Andrea's or
San Gregorio's, the Gesu, or other chapel,
at the messe musquée, or scented and
fashionable mass — so a lively prelate once put
it — when the organ is at those curious pranks
of his, jingling bells by machinery, we shall
see these ladies flashing in superb raiment
that positively dazzles. Burgher Tagliafico is
ambitious, too; and with needy ducas and
princesses hovering in their own aerial realms,
ready to swoop where they see a fair dowry,
there is a possible chance of a young daughter
of the people being drafted over the border into
the grand order of nobility. Still it is surprising
that these burgher maidens should boast attractions
sufficient to overbear the inert momentum
of caste; for at that Sunday worship you will
assuredly see no Canova angel, or crinolined
Venus de Medici, prostrate over their straw-seated
chairs. Note, too, that tendency to contracted
shoulders and high drawn up neck, from
which no draped shawl can be made by any art
to slope away with pyramidal descent. The
root of which anatomical deformity lies in that
semi-barbarous fashion of teaching tiny Mezzo
Ceto to walk, suspending him with an endless
belt under his little armpits. So is the young
idea educated into toddling, and the young
succulent shoulders are swung into an unsightly
contraction. So do the Roman matrons of a lower
order still swaddle their infants in tight compact
parcels, and lay them fearlessly on a wall,
or the outer edge of a fountain, as they would a
stone or block of wood: then set their arms
akimbo, and hold sweet gossip with Roman
Gaffer Gray. Some young ladies of the Mezzo
Ceto, who succeed in living down the swathing
process and the swinging belt, are ticketed at
fabulous dowries. I could direct you at this
moment to an obscure cabaret — say pothouse
— lying in a slum, worth, upon the city valuation,
if there be such a return, a bare ten pounds
yearly, where you shall find a pearl of estimable
price, with ten thousand scudi and more to her
fortune. And this nuptial fusion of high and
low caste sets me thinking of a little picture
from the life.

One Sunday morning. I wander into the
church of San Marcello, which beards that
huge waste of Palace called Doria Pamphili.
Friend C——, cheeriest and most jocund of the
sons of men, has led me thither, whispering
me with mystery, "You shall see what you
shall see!" And so I kneel on a wicket-chair,
but a few paces from the plain slab which covers
over the gentle Gonsalvi, with many men and
women picturesquely prostrate about me. I grieve
to say I think more of one Roberts, R.A., and
Luigi Haghe, who would have dealt magnificently
with these kneeling worshippers, and strewn
them effectively over a choice cathedral piece,
than of holier and more becoming subjects.
Services, too, proceeding contemporaneously
at the high altar in front, at the smaller
altar directly on my right, at the altar directly on
my left, at remoter altars rather behind me well
down the church, help to make it a matter of
much nicety and embarrassment how to deport
myself with due reverence to each contemporaneous
service. Thus, turning my face to Mecca, or
to the high altar, I am clearly wanting in
respect of a remote altar, having my back
towards that ritual. Striving to adapt myself
to a position which would look all ways at once,
and in which the reverse of the human figure
would be turned to no special direction, the
result is, that I find myself looking a prostrate
lady steadily in the face who is following a
far-off service directly over my shoulder. Thus
failing in this well-meaning attempt at trimming,
as all trimming attempts usually do fail, I at
length think—with surprise, too, at its being
so long unthought of — of the business that
has brought me there. Presently, the services
being done, C——draws near, and touching
me mysteriously, whispers hoarsely, and
simply points. Points whitherward? My eye
runs along his extended finger, and reaches
a portly pair kneeling just by,  who have a
general air of licensed victualling. The finger
encourages me, and, knowing that I burn, I
measure the fair closely, and see that the licensed
victualler is burly and compressed, and gathers
up his wife's prayer-books with much humility.
Licensed victualler's wife I find to be a great
frouzy wench, with a mottled face, inflamed
(perhaps with licensed victualling), and a
variegated shawl, richly dressed in flaming silks,
with a bright yellow bonnet.

Trooping out presently in the flux of population,
C—takes me by the arm with "effusion," and says,
"Did you see? Tolla!"

I start— "Tolla? What, the licensed victualler's
wife? Impossible!"

"But it is so. That was Monsieur and
Madame Savarelli, father and mother of
Tolla of poor, unhappy, betrayed Tolla!"

If there be a sweet tale in this world, or one
which, by its natural tenderness and clear
unaffected simplicity, makes us for a moment
think of a story of a certain dear clergyman who
was some time incumbent of Wakefield, it is
this true history of trusting Tolla. I think
how strange it is that such a legend should
have come from a cynic's lips, unbroken by a
sneer and from one who, in his small way, is
a professed mimic of the great Voltaire.

Do we not most of us know that touching
legend? It is no new thing that M. About
should bring on his little stage a false and noble
Lelio, who wins the heart of an humble maid
of a rank far below him. Not unnatural, too,
that the princely family should set themselves
against this unequal alliance; nor is it startling
to the conventional morality of the world that
they should send out the noble youth upon his
travels, furnished with a sort of devilish Mentor,
smooth and artful, who, by adroit distraction,
shall gradually fill his mind with other thoughts.
Gradually the letters grow slack — perhaps are